Kind of a weird simple question. I’ve always tried to animate every detail as i go… But i know other people will like break it down into certain poses every 10 frames or something and then reposition them later and fill out the inbetween.
I’m sure there’s other methods too to structuring out the animation before going for full detail from the start.
It hasn’t clicked in my brain yet so i thought i’d come ask…
How do you set up your project for animation?
Try blocking in the main poses first. A good animation is an animation with striking, beautiful poses taken individually. Act it out, film yourself, and try to see what are the “steps” so to say, the important moments that you have to nail down to convey what’s going on. Use stepped interpolation (change default fcurve in preferences to constant) and render out some frames to play back at real speed (viewport playback may not be consistent and will give you a biased view of your shot).
I also started out doing animation “straight ahead” as they say (look up this term) but it’s definitely not the best way, at least professionally - when you need to quickly provide a client with a clear idea of what they’re going to get, setting down the main poses -carefully timed- is the best way. It’s basically what used to be done (and still is being done) with traditional cel animation.